


O Perfect Masters

by Lady_of_the_Flowers



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Pre-Prisoner of Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:06:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_of_the_Flowers/pseuds/Lady_of_the_Flowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last person Remus expected to see standing on his doorstep in the pouring rain was Sirius Black.</p>
            </blockquote>





	O Perfect Masters

**Author's Note:**

> an old story I've had rattling around on my hard-drive for a while. title & lyrics from Dead Finks Don't Talk by Brian Eno.

Remus is living very quietly these days. The sum he inherited from the recent death of his father mostly covers rent for the little stone cottage—more of a shack really—he found just outside of Hartswaithe in the Yorkshire Dales. He manages everything else with transfigured money and increasingly powerful suggestive spells. He hasn’t stepped into Imperius territory yet, but he does consider it sometimes, when he’s tired of telling the wolf in his stomach that one batch of soup stretched out over a week could ever be enough.

It’s raining—it’s always raining here—and Remus has a cassette of the first Brian Eno record on his little battery radio; he’s feeling a little (a lot) sentimental tonight. He’s half-way through his third glass of whiskey when something tugs insistently at his mind, twice. He is only a little bit drunk, but does not immediately recognize it as the signal that his wards have been breached until there’s a knock on his door and he leaps, startled, to unsteady feet. The accompanying rush of blood to his head keeps him from getting to the door very quickly, and whoever it is—god he hopes this isn’t the end, although what would it really matter now anyway?—knocks again, more insistently.

“Hold your horses.” He mumbles under the clatter of rain on the roof and unlocks the door, pulling it open just a crack. The person outside—oh, hell—the person outside is at once familiar as his own face and also utterly transformed.

He feels like all his breath has been squeezed out of his lungs as his heart ricochets around his skull, his voice no more than a whisper, “Can’t be.” Then, gathering himself slightly, “What are you doing here?”

“I expect it’s in all the papers.” Sirius says, sounding as tired as he looks, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“I don’t read the papers.” Remus angles his body to block the door, so Sirius remains standing ankle-deep in mud, the rain pouring onto his shoulders through his long, matted hair, too coarse to flatten to his skull. He mustn’t come in. Remus doesn’t know where his wand is. Sirius Black has escaped—escaped!—from Azkaban and he doesn’t know where his ruddy wand is. If he dies tonight, it will be a week or more before anyone finds him.  

As if Sirius can read minds, he says, “Please let me in. I’m not here to hurt you. I just need a place to spend the night, and I’ll be out of your hair by the morning.” He is leaning against the doorframe like it is the only thing keeping him upright, “It’s been a long trip.”         

“I would imagine so.” Remus starts to feel a little sick. The music from indoors filters towards them, a few snatches of sound (memory) between the sheets of rain. He could swear he sees Sirius’s ears prick like a dog’s, and then the hollow face seems to crumple inwards just a little bit more.         

“I haven’t—twelve years and I haven’t heard music—not a bloody song—” He might be crying, but it’s most likely the rain. Remus can’t quite believe he’s doing this, but perhaps it is his own fault for listening to one of Sirius’ favorite records and conjuring him up out of nowhere. He opens the door just wide enough for Sirius’ emaciated body to slip through, then locks it behind them.   

“You should probably get out of those clothes.” Remus says, “They’re a bit conspicuous.” He means the green and grey prison stripes more than anything, but also that they’re soaking wet and making puddles on his floor.           

“I’ve been traveling as Padfoot, mostly.” Sirius says. He stands in the middle of the room like he doesn’t know what to do with himself now he’s inside, shaking and dripping and about to collapse. He continues, “Couldn’t risk discovery until I’d found you. I—I need to tell you things.” His eyes are desperate and deep set, more profoundly tired than Remus has ever seen them, “I didn’t do it, you have to believe me—“          

Remus turns away from him, towards the two-burner gas range, towards the kettle, towards tea. He cuts off Sirius’ half-spoken protest, “I don’t want to hear what you have to say. You’ll have some tea, sleep on the floor, and be out of here by first light, do you understand?"            

He doesn’t need to look back to see the hurt on Sirius’ face. It’s all in his voice as he says, “I understand.”           

“Good.” He gets some water from the hand-pump by the sink and puts the kettle on to boil. He pauses, his back still turned, by the kitchen cabinet, “I expect you’re hungry.” 

“Might be. A little.” Sirius says it like he’s trying to make a joke but Remus isn’t interested. He tells himself so very firmly. Remus puts the rest of the parsnip soup on to heat and hopes it’s enough. He hasn’t got more, really, just a few sprouting potatoes and a withered head of cabbage in the pantry. Two cans of beans but no toast to put them on. A poor showing, all things considered. Sirius doesn’t seem to notice as he practically inhales the first bowl of soup then shoves it back across the rickety table for more.         

“Are you sure?” Remus asks before he can stop himself, and Sirius gives him a pleading look. He fills the bowl again and finds that his hands are shaking, he’s slopped soup over the sides of the bowl and made a mess. His own appetite has been reduced to a nervous lump at the pit of his stomach. This time Sirius gets through half before hunching over with a slow gulp and clambering to the sink to throw up, a horrible splatter that almost makes Remus sick himself.          

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—“ Sirius says, his head hanging over the sink, bracing his arms on the counter, “I didn’t mean to waste your food.”         

Remus pours himself another cup of tea and wishes he’d remembered to buy cigarettes the last time he was at the village shops. “You always overdo it.” He says, and kicks himself internally for reminiscing. Sirius isn’t supposed to be here, it throws his whole world off-balance

“I didn’t think I’d find you like this.” Sirius says, stumbling back over to his chair and sinking into it with a sigh, “Living like this, I mean.” Remus feels a prickle of irritation that in the moment when Sirius should be the most grateful and, frankly, groveling, he has taken it upon himself to criticize. Is Sirius really so oblivious? But he knows the tricks one’s mind can play if you’re not careful, the happy dreams it can create about all the people you’ve left behind.         

“What else could you possibly have expected?” Remus asks. It comes out rather sharp but he doesn’t apologize.        

“I dunno…” Sirius shrugs in that way of his, an uncannily Sirius-like gesture for a scarred, living skeleton to make, “Pretty wife, kids, house in the country with a rambling garden. The usual rot." 

“Werewolves don’t have children.” Remus says, and takes a sip of his lukewarm tea. Sirius looks like he’s about to argue, but stops himself. It almost makes Remus sad that the only place which could teach Sirius restraint is prison.

“I suppose you’ve got the house in the country though, though.” He looks around, “More of a shack, really.”          

“Oh, shut up.” Remus says, and goes to sort out some spare linens in the bedroom. He isn’t hiding. He just wants the space of a room, of a door, between them for a moment. Just to get his head straight. There’s a gap between them twelve years wide, and Remus can’t pretend it’s not there, that their words aren’t echoes barely reaching distant shores. When he comes back, Sirius is still slumped at the table, looking half-asleep and miserable, like their reunion isn’t going quite the way he hoped.          

“How did you find me?” Remus asks. There’s a couch which came with the place, a musty old two-seater that even the owner—an elderly shepherd—didn’t want, and Remus tucks a sheet around the cushions like this is the most normal thing in the world, “They broke your wand.” The only tracking spells he knows are wand-magic, and he certainly hasn’t told anyone his whereabouts. He isn’t even going by his real name.           

Sirius smiles, revealing rotting, broken teeth, “There’re spells that don’t need wands, if you remember.” His smile says, _dark magic_.           

“You’d need something of mine for that, wouldn’t you?” Remus says, “Blood or…” Saliva, or semen, or tears.          

“I had a piece of your hair.” Sirius says, and pulls something out of his ragged overcoat, “That lock you gave me—you remember—“         

“Fifth year.” Remus says despite himself. It was meant as a joke, really, and he’d only done it because Sirius had begged him so persistently. _Don’t make me go home without something to remember you by, Moony,_ he’d sung in Remus’ ear, kneeling on his bed as they were packing up to leave at the end of term. He had the scissors ready and everything, knowing in advance that Remus would never allow one of Sirius’ severing spells to pass near his face again, not after the Great Hair-Cutting Disaster of 1973. He never thought—he couldn’t have anticipated—that Sirius would have kept it all this time. That it might lead to his downfall. Associating with a known criminal is enough to get him thrown into prison too, or more likely, put down like an animal without a second thought. Everyone knows Dementors don’t work the same on Dark creatures as they do on humans.         

Sirius is still telling his story, “As soon as I got out and had a moment to breathe while hiding in a forest, I set up the spell. I’d been thinking about it for months, or years, maybe. I—I forget. Planning what might happen if I got out, who I’d come to first.” He looks up at Remus, who is standing frozen in the middle of the room, almost exactly in the pool of water left by Sirius’ entrance, bedclothes piled in his arms, “It was always you, of course.” Neither of them needs to say that Remus is the last of their friends left.         

“You can’t stay past the night.” Remus says severely, and tosses a pillow onto couch with a thump, like a lead weight, “You know how dangerous it is for you to be here.”          

“More dangerous for you, probably.” Sirius says, “Anything’s better than where I’ve been.”

Remus doesn’t want to hear about it or talk about it. Sirius’ waxy skin is encrusted with a layer of grime that says more than words ever could.         

“I can’t run you a bath.” The thought comes to him suddenly, “Haven’t got a tub. But I could fix up some hot water and a cloth. If you want.”        

Sirius’ shaggy, greying head nods. He reaches out and grabs Remus’ wrist as Remus crosses the room to the kitchen area, “Thank you.” The words have never sounded so heartfelt or pitiful before, but it’s still not enough. Remus hasn’t spent the past twelve years trying to forget just to have it all to be taken away in one hopeful moment. He pulls away easily—he was always stronger than Sirius, even when they were young—and washes out the big soup-pot to heat water in. Sometime during their conversation the music had cut out and now to ease the silence which looms unbearably between them, he turns the cassette over to Side B and presses play. Sirius closes his eyes and leans his head back, concentrating.          

“Brian Eno, is it?” He asks.         

“Mm.”         

Sirius begins to laugh, a thread of mania in it, “I could eat this music, that’s how much I’ve missed it. Listening—listening isn’t enough. Can you put it louder?”         

“Fine.” Remus turns the dial until the little radio is vibrating on its counter-top perch, until every sound is audible over the incessant rain. He’s lucky he hasn’t got neighbors.

“Why aren’t you using magic?” Sirius asks, and the question surprises him.        

“Oh…I suppose I’ve gotten out of the habit.” He is self-conscious now about how slowly the water is heating, the late-summer chill in the house, the leaky ceiling, his misplaced wand. He was always complete shite at household charms anyway. Once the water is hot enough to scald but not burn, he lifts the pot off the burner and sets it on the floor, a wash-cloth and mostly clean towel next to it. 

“I assume you can take care of this yourself.” He says, and makes a quick escape back to the bedroom. The house is filled with more noise than he’s accustomed to. He’s managed to tune the rain out, but there’s a methodical splashing from the main room, the radio’s tinny song, and Sirius singing along in a rumbling voice, _oh perfect masters, they thrive on disasters, they all look so harmless, till they find their way up here…_ He’s impressed Sirius can remember the lyrics after so long. He hears an ominous crash and rushes out into the main room to find Sirius has lost his balance, probably doing something foolish like washing his feet standing up, and taken a chair down with him. Adrenaline and the irresistible need to fight or flee is coursing through his veins. He takes a deep breath to calm himself. 

Sirius looks up at him sheepishly, “Obviously I should never be left alone. I’m a menace to society.” Something dark passes across his face as he says it. He blinks the expression away, “The chair should be fine, though. Don’t know about my shin.” He rubs the sore spot. Now that he’s naked and Remus is looking at him, really looking, he sees exactly how the landscape of Sirius’ body has changed. Skinner than a stray dog sleeping in the dust of the roadside. Red flea-bite bumps in the creases of his joints. A long line of tattoos mark him from concave belly to the splayed-out ribs of his upper chest. More cover his arms, down even to his knuckles. Remus hasn’t seen their like before, but he can guess at their meaning. Intimidation, identification, belonging. The closer he inspects them, the more his skin begins to prickle. There’s something he isn’t seeing. There’s…ah, a weak protection spell, tattooed into the skin itself. Indelible and virtually undetectable unless you know what you’re looking for.

“They didn’t help.” Sirius says, as if he can tell exactly what Remus is thinking, again, “I’ve got about five of the spells on. The only thing that kept me sane ‘til the end was knowing I’m innocent.” He looks desperate and pleading again, “You’ve got to listen to me, Harry’s in danger—"            

“If you tell me anything, anything at all, about how you did it or why, you’ve as good as killed me.” Remus says, backing away, “You _know_ that. I need to be able to claim plausible deniability if anyone comes asking. Not that it will help much.” He adds bitterly.           

“Fine.” Sirius’ shoulders drop, and he reaches for the washcloth again, scrubbing slowly at his narrow thigh. A thin film of dirt floats over the now-murky water in the pot. Remus dumps it down the sink and sets clean water to heat on the range. Sirius is half-clean and shivering, knobby shoulders wrapped in the small threadbare towel. He still looks terrible.         

“You can toss the water out yourself when you’re through, and douse the lamps. I’m going to bed.” Remus takes the bottle of whiskey with him, and shuts the door definitively between them. It’s a closet of a room, but it fits a mattress in the corner and a smile pile of his last remaining books which serves as his nightstand. A kerosene lamp provides the only light. He lowers it to a dim flicker and leans back onto the blankets, kicking his shoes off. This whole evening has been closer to a dream than waking reality. He wonders, with the tingling burn of whiskey in his mouth, whether Sirius will even be here in the morning or if he’s imagined the whole thing like he has so many times before, in the space between sleeping and awake. But then music starts again in the other room, muffled now, and that’s rather hard to imagine on one’s own. Isn’t it?            

Sirius must have played the cassette at least three times straight, both sides, before the light beneath Remus’ door shifts to darkness and silence reigns. Even the sky has ceased battering the earth and he feels quiet, like he’s holding an eggshell in his chest, matte and smooth. It doesn’t matter if Sirius is really here or not, he tells himself. And he lets himself feel a slow, spreading joy at the presence of a man in the kitchen whom he never expected to see again or even, at the very least, to imagine in such great detail, down to the putrid smell of sweat and fear.          

In the early hours of the still sleepless morning, Remus climbs out of bed and weaves his way by touch into the main room, where he lights a candle and replaces the whiskey bottle in the cabinet. He really shouldn’t drink any more tonight. Besides a glass of water, perhaps. He casts the candle’s light over in the direction of the couch and his heart-beat stutters when he realizes that Sirius is no longer in it. An apparition, then, he thinks until he catches sight of a blanket-draped figure curled up on the floor with its back to the wall. He kneels by it and senses rather than sees the soft rise and fall of breath.

“S’that you, Mooney?” The figure speaks, and it’s Sirius, down to the late-night rasp, the nickname, everything. He smells a right side better than he did earlier but his hair and beard still obscure his face from immediate recognition.          

“Yes, I’m here.” Remus says, just as softly. He settles onto the floor beside him. With the lights off, it’s easier to pretend they’re not strangers.          

“Didn’t feel right, not sleeping on the ground.” Sirius says, and shifts slightly so their eyes meet in the near-dark, “Thanks anyway for setting up the couch.”          

“I’m sorry.” Remus says, and finds that he means it. No matter that Sirius probably killed fourteen people and their friend Peter. No matter that he killed all of them, really, including Remus, whose body just hasn’t gotten the message to quit yet. Sirius blinks slowly, sleepily. He must be exhausted.          

“I never thought I’d live this long.” Sirius says, like he’s speaking to himself, “Always assumed I’d go down in flames and glory, fighting for the cause. That they’d sing my name in the streets after we won. But there’s nothing glorious about rotting away from the inside.”          

“You still have a chance.” Remus says, even though he really shouldn’t be encouraging this kind of schoolyard foolishness.          

“I know.” Sirius’ voice is intent, and Remus can only imagine what plans are driving Sirius now. What tooth gnaws at his insides and keeps him awake. Remus flicks his gaze to the side, unable to hold eye contact for long, and Sirius begins to cough, old phlegm rattling in his chest. He props himself up on his elbows as he rides it out, gasping, “Water—water—“ with streaming eyes.          

Remus fetches him a cup and watches him drink it, watches it spill into his beard leaving behind a caul of glistening drops in the twisted black forest. The rattle eases. He’ll need supplies and time to heal. But knowing Sirius, he’ll carry on without and wind up just another dead dog in a ditch, hit by a passing car. Remus wrestles with the nasty little voice in his ear which he thinks is probably his conscience, telling him that his care is wasted on a dead man walking, a traitor, a lunatic. No, Remus tells the voice, that’s _me_.           

“I didn’t really think you were the spy, back then.” Sirius says, apropos of nothing. He’s sitting up, facing Remus, who still won’t look at him, “But everyone was jumping at shadows and I got caught up in it. Your silences were suspicious, but we should— _I_ should have remembered that’s just how you are.”

“You don’t need to—“

“Remus, please. I’m _sorry_. I’ve spent the past twelve years thinking about it.”          

“It doesn’t matter now anyway.” Remus says. He hopes Sirius knows how hard it is to deny him anything, how hard it has always been. But he cannot give Sirius this, not now. He hopes Sirius understands.  “I’d like to believe you. But I need proof—and not just your word. If you’re—if you’re right, then I’ll fight for you.” The very idea is unbelievable, but so, until recently, was the possibility of anyone breaking out of Azkaban.          

Sirius doesn’t respond immediately. Instead, he takes Remus’ hand from where it is lying on the dusty floor, and matches him palm to palm with meticulous gentleness. Then rough, bony fingers slide between his own, and fix his hand in a fierce grip. Remus does not pull away. It only hurts a little. “I’ll find it. Proof enough even for you. You’ll see.” His eyes are focused on some indistinct point in the room but Remus has the feeling that they are actually seeing far beyond it, to a memory or a future he does not know.          

“I thought of you every full moon.” Sirius says, “There was a window in my cell and sometimes I could see the corner of the moon as it rose.” He loosens his hold on Remus’ hand, letting his fingers trace soft shapes on his wrists. Remus instinctively does the same but stops. He is unpleasantly reminded of the Hand of Glory he encountered once as a boy, with its papery mummified skin.          

Remus does not say how he tries to avoid thinking of Sirius or anyone at all during the moon. The wolf helps him in this. It wipes every human thought clean out of his mind.  

“Where do you go for the—you know? From what I saw it’s mostly open country in these parts."            

“There are caves all throughout the Dales. That’s why I came here. Ward myself in at night, spell myself out in the morning.” He smiles, “The wolf can’t use a wand.” 

“Oh, Mooney…”          

He’s grateful Sirius hasn’t seen him during the day, can’t see what the wolf has done to his face. Never a great beauty to begin with, the youth and energy and light of the old days has leaked out of him one moon at a time. The grey hair at his temples tells him so. His covers his sagging, scarred body with clothes he picks up from donation bins. Wolves do not live as long as humans do, this is the way things must be.           

Sirius shifts over so they can sit side-by-side, even though there’s plenty of room to spread out in; their backs against the wall, blanket tucked over their laps and cold feet. For a long time they do not speak, and gradually the nervous current flowing through Remus’ skin eases and begins to dissipate into the air around them, out of the cottage, and into the night. Their fingers tangle together again mindlessly, and time slips past. It has been two months since he was last touched. A stranger bumped into him at the shop. For Sirius—even longer, probably.           

Did time feel the same there as it does out here? Remus wants to ask. Did grief feel the same? Have you moved forward or stayed in the same place? 

Sirius speaks before he has a chance to, “Keep a weather eye out for anything unusual. And—keep watch over Harry, if you can. I—I’m not in any position to do so.” Sirius hesitates, like there is something more he’s about to say. His mouth snaps shut, wise man, and his fingers tighten and loosen unconsciously around Remus’s. Remus wants…more. To touch those tattoos, every new scar, every familiar mark. Heat flares in his chest and it’s almost painful, like taking a breath in the hours leading up to his transformation. So much easier in the dark to pretend no time has passed at all.         

“I will.” He doesn’t know how, but he is willing to try. He hasn’t seen the boy since Harry was an infant, although he thought about it many times. Once, he went so far as to travel to Surry and walked past the house where Harry’s relatives keep him. But he stopped himself at their front door, the neighbor’s dog barking at him like it sensed an enemy or a friend, and remembered how he left things with James, all the mistrust between them that would never be resolved (not so with Lily, Lily always believed in him; hers was ultimately the greater spirit). Maybe he can pick up some work as a day-laborer during the next harvest and visit Hogsmeade incognito once he’s got enough money to pay for lodgings. It’s not much, but it’s something. Sirius is watching him intently, disconcertingly steady and still, even as his body trembles, so Remus says again, “I will. I promise.”     

Sirius looks at him a moment longer, searching for sincerity, then nods and rests his head back against the wall, like his neck isn’t strong enough to support it anymore. He seems content to just sit there, holding hands in the silence and rain. It’s too easy. Remus doesn’t trust easy anymore, maybe he never has.  

“What—what do you know?” Remus asks, trying not to sound as suspicious as he feels. Whispers circulate Azkaban like Dementors, everyone knows that. And he can’t quite let go of the many years he has spent mistrusting his own childhood memories, his own sense that there is something _right_ about Sirius, something good that cannot be shaken even by grief or by madness, and never by some lunatic’s quest for power.           

Sirius’ forehead creases briefly, “Nothing…specific. I just have a feeling. It’s not—you can _trust_ me, Remus. I would never hurt Harry.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” That, at least, Remus can say with a clear conscience, “You were so disgustingly besotted with him after he was born.”

Sirius is practically beaming at that, and he laughs—the sound startled out of him—laughs until he coughs, and Remus has to hand him the water again, “Like you were any better, you softhearted old fool.”

Remus smiles too, and shakes his head. He’s feeling unaccountably warm from just the slightest bit of contact with Sirius’s skin, buoyed by the sound of Sirius’s laughter, a sound he never thought he’d hear again and he’d missed it—missed it so much without even realizing. If he closes his eyes and ignores the myriad little aches and pains in his body, all the signs of aging, he could be back in the Gryffindor common room, curled up by the fire with his friend, just the two of them alone with everyone else gone to bed. The clench in his chest has transfigured into an ache, an ache to lean over and kiss Sirius’s mouth like old times. He’s just drunk enough that he does it before he can talk himself out of it.

Sirius gasps a little, free hand coming up to cup Remus’s cheek tenderly, like Remus is made of glass, fragile. Then, he pushes Remus away, a wry smile twisting his scabbed lips.

“You wouldn’t want to do that if you knew how long it’s been since I saw a toothbrush.” He says, but his eyes are burning and Remus knows that look. He knows what it promises, “I’ll find you again. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Remus says, and decides it’s time to retreat to his own bed in his own room before he makes any more potentially fatal mistakes for the sake of the ghost of a man he once loved. 

Remus wakes to thoughts of what clothes he can spare Sirius, what food to give him for his journey, what final words to say. There is a thrum of anticipation at the prospect of seeing him again with the grey morning light upon him, and some fear as well. Remus could laugh. He feels like a teenager again. He walks out into the main room, mostly dressed although barely presentable, and finds Sirius is well and truly gone. He’s left the sheet and blanket wadded up on the floor— _typical_ —but that’s the only evidence Remus can find that Sirius has been here at all.

He sits down heavily on the couch and holds his head in his hands. He’s hungover this morning, nothing worse than usual, though, so there must be another explanation for how suddenly wretched he feels. After a while he heaves a sigh and stands up again, deciding to make himself some tea. He’ll put a pinch of sugar in and call it breakfast. Life must go on, but he doesn't quite know how anymore. All the resigned apathy he's spent so long building has evaporated in the space of a night, and he can't help but think about things outside the narrow confines of the world he's built himself, hidden away from memories of the past. He's got so many questions. Where Dumbledore is now, what has become of Harry, whether his mum would fancy a visit from her disgrace of a son. Most of all, he thinks of Sirius and worries if he's alright. 

The water is just boiling when there's a rap at the window, and through the dirty glass he sees, of all things in this world, an owl. Remus freezes by the range, convinced its summons from the Ministry. They've been after him to get registered for months now, and though he's read the new bill a hundred times over, he can't seem to find a loophole. But the timing is too precise. It must have something to do with Sirius's visit, though how the Ministry could know already, when it had taken Remus completely by surprise, is a mystery to him. He's not naive enough to put it past them, though. Might as well get it over with, Remus thinks, and unlatches the window, letting the great horned owl in to perch on the windowsill. Remus pries the thick envelope from its claws and turns it over. 

It's not from the Ministry. 

> _Mr. R J Lupin_
> 
> _11 Shrivening Lane_
> 
> _Hartswaithe_
> 
> _Yorkshire_
> 
>  
> 
> _Dear Mr. Lupin,_
> 
> _I hope this letter finds you well. It has come to my attention that you are currently in search of gainful employment. We at Hogwarts are short one Defence Against the Dark Arts professor this year and it occurred to me that you might be interested. If I am correct, please send word back with Alfric. The Hogwarts Express leaves Platform 9 ¾ on September 1st at 11 o'clock, as I am sure you remember. Teacher's robes will be provided upon arrival. Your ticket is enclosed. I do hope you'll say yes._
> 
> _Fondly,_
> 
> _A. P. W. B. Dumbledore_

This time, Remus does laugh, clutching the letter like exactly the kind of sentimental fool he always accused Sirius of being. He can hardly see to pen his response but there's no doubt as to what the answer will be. He's done worse for less, and this—this will give him the chance to do things over. To make good on his mistakes, and then make new ones. He closes his eyes and remembers the sensation of Sirius's fingers threaded through his. Mistakes like that. 

The next time he sees Sirius, he’s convinced of Sirius’ innocence, and they embrace and steal kisses in the Shrieking Shack with Harry and his friends watching, bewildered, as if it is the first time, as if Sirius never knocked on Remus's door in the pouring rain and Remus never hesitated letting him in. 


End file.
